Cardiovascular recovery from acute laboratory stress: Reliability and concurrent validity

Objective: We assessed the value of laboratory measures of cardiovascular r ecovery across four criteria: reliability across multiple tasks, reliabilit y across a 3-year time interval, ability to predict daily ambulatory blood pressure, and interrelationships with coronary risk factors and psychosocia l variables. Methods: Three hundred twenty-nine healthy adults (mean age = 27.1 years) completed a two-part protocol consisting of 1 day of laboratory testing and 1 day of ambulatory monitoring. The laboratory protocol includ ed a 15-minute baseline assessment followed by three 5-minute laboratory ch allenges (mental arithmetic, speech, and handgrip). Five-minute recovery pe riods followed each exercise. One hundred twenty-five participants returned after 3 years to repeat the protocol. Results: When aggregated across task s, cardiovascular recovery showed acceptable levels of internal consistency (cu values = 0.7) and proved relatively stable across time [r values = 0.2 2-0.35). Recovery values statistically improved the prediction of daily amb ulatory readings above baseline and stress reactivity laboratory values (p values <.001) but were largely unrelated to coronary risk factors or psycho social measures. Conclusion: These results suggest that cardiovascular reco very from acute laboratory stress can be treated as a stable individual dif ference variable that can improve standard laboratory-based predictor model s of ambulatory readings.